Reflections, Reviews and News from the worlds of Opera and Classical Music

Friday, 20 October 2017

Theater an der Wien: Wozzeck

17 October 2017

When asked what the essence of Wozzeck is in his booklet interview, Robert Carsen answers that ‘It presents a great hopelessness.’ His view of the work, as presented in his new
production for the Theater an der Wien, is unremittingly bleak then, made all the
more so for its military minimalist aesthetic.

Gideon Davey’s set consists of three camouflage walls
encompassing the stage, those on either side with multiple high openings. Wires
slung between them allow for sheets of material—also camouflage—to be
efficiently pulled across to delineate the space and cover up changes of the
largely minimal scenery.

Click to enlarge

When the space is opened up, we get the sense (amplified by
the characteristically atmospheric lighting by Carsen and Peter van Praet) of exaggerated perspective, especially
effective as we watch Wozzeck drown in the blue-green distance. As you’d expect
from Carsen, it’s a production that has a few moments of such poetry, of simple
means creating powerful effects.

But Berg’s opera and his version of Büchner’s brilliantly
drawn characters don’t always benefit, it seems to me, from the conceptual open
spaces of this particular aesthetic. The costumes see women and even children, as well
as the men, kitted out in military garb: here is a uniform world without
contrasts; we could be anywhere in time or place in the last half century.

There’s no flinching in the portrayal of this rogue’s gallery: the Captain (a sturdy, forthright John Daszak) is relentlessly
hectoring, the Doctor (an impressive Stefan Cerny) relentlessly cruel, the Tambourmajor (Aleš
Briscein, less heroic than many in the role) charmless and unremittingly sadistic.

The misery of Lise Lindstrom’s strongly and often beautifully sung Marie is
complete—and requires the occasional alleviation through drugs—and one gets
little sense of any joy whatsoever derived from her child, portrayed with a
heartbreaking sense of isolation at this performance by Samuel Wegleitner. The
only hint of respite in this world of misery comes in Benjamin Hulett’s
relatively breezy Andres.

At the heart of it all is an impressive Wozzeck from
Florian Boesch, who, as we know from his Lieder-singing, is never afraid to put expressionistic directness first; vocal beauty—and this is not a voice of
honeyed tones and rich colours in any case—is subordinated to dramatic truth.
Unlike with his Lieder-singing, though, here he seemed to have been encouraged to
draw from just one side of his broad expressive palette.

There were a handful of moments of hushed intimacy,
admittedly, but a predominance of raw, visceral roar. This was Wozzeck as beefy brute,
his animalistic qualities further emphasised at the start of his scene with the
Doctor: he sits downstage with his back to us blithely producing a stool
sample, wiping his bare backside before delivering his offering for inspection.

As a demonstration of the character’s humiliation and loss of dignity it was undeniably
effective. And I won’t forget in a hurry the moment, at the height of Wozzeck’s paranoia, that Boesch made his way to
the front of the stage to eyeball us and unleash the full power of his voice. But
reducing the character to an animal risked reducing us in the audience to viewers of some sort of nature documentary rather than spectators of a drama—and a deeply human one at that.

Wozzeck’s murder of Marie, conveyed with unblinking
directness, was shocking; but neither that nor his final stumble through a
field of bodies (dead, one presumed, but it wasn’t entirely clear) moved me on
an emotional level. The child’s forlorn ‘Hopp, hopp’ at the close, a rifle repurposed
as hobbyhorse, was also less touching than it can be in stagings that cover more of the spectrum between the human and the animal. In focusing powerfully on
the dehumanising effects of military life, Carsen was making an important point; but he also, it seemed to me, lost some of the work’s richness, blunting its tragedy.

Arguably the work’s richness was also what was primarily
lost in the orchestral performance, with Leo Hussain conducting a new version of
the score by Eberhard Kloke—largely a matter of compression of the instrumentation
so that the Wiener Symphoniker could be squeezed into the Theater an der Wien’s
modest pit.

Sinewy and raw, conducted with a powerful sense of focus, it nevertheless complemented Carsen’s forceful vision well—a vision given yet greater force by fearlessly committed performances from the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and the well-drilled cast.

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About Me

I am freelance critic, writer and musicologist based in Berlin. I have held editorial posts at Gramophone and Opera, was opera critic of the Spectator and have worked as a critic for the Daily Telegraph and Financial Times. I was editor of 30-Second Opera (Ivy Press, 2015), now also available – when I checked last – in French, German and Spanish. My PhD (awarded from King's College London in early 2011) was a critical reassessment of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's 'Die Frau ohne Schatten'; further details of my academic work can be found under 'Publications and Papers'.
If you'd like to email me, I can be reached on hugojeshirley[at]gmail.com.

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Fatal Conclusions is designed to serve as a modest outlet for various reviews (of varying levels of formality and punctuality) and ideas regarding what's going on in the Opera and Classical Music worlds--and, if I'm feeling adventurous, beyond. Thanks for popping by. I hope you enjoy reading and please feel free to leave comments.